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Messages - jp.mech

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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Confession: I think vampires are a terrible addition

« on: March 05, 2012, 12:23:26 pm »

It feels buggy in the sense that vampires require quite a bit of micromanaging or metagaming to deal with the situation and there are not many game mechanics to deal with them properly after finding them. Yes you can accuse them of the crime, but they simply go back into the population after their jail term or 'execution' and nobody else seems to care. Do dwarves even get happy/sad thoughts related to the jailing/release of someone who's killed their friend? There's no way to get rid of them that doesn't involve a pit or magma.
It would be more interesting if they were more discrete. Rather than always losing a dwarf, what if there was some other way that a vampire's presence was notable? Victims fainting in the middle of work due to low blood levels and sent to the hospital to rest for example.

What was the mechanic that aroused suspicion in all of the previous cities that the vampire lived in and is it present in fortress mode? Has anyone experienced a case where vampires left the fort voluntarily, given that they spent jail time and you didn't lock them up in their personal walled off burrow room with no doors?

DF Gameplay Questions / Re: List of Vampire Facts

« on: March 04, 2012, 05:16:36 pm »

Two things I noticed with my vampires.
They can become invisible - don't know if its turning into bats or what but I had a fort basically on its way to defeat/tantrum spiral due to an ambush. Had a vampire sitting in the jail fall into melancholy due to the death of their friends. In the aftermath, I was looking at some patients in the hospital, the same level the prison was on, to notice that the vampire's chain was gone - he had broken himself free. Shortly thereafter, he vanished and I saw two doors on the way out to the main hall open and close with no one else walking through them. I don't know if he was leaving or only going for a snack because I abandoned thereafter and that world suffered from 34.01 world corruption.

In another fort with 4 vampires with nearly 25+ feedings to their name (mostly my important dwarves who were given proper rooms), I decided to send them into the 2nd cavern to explore since my hammerer was merely tickling them or not even bothering to beat them despite holding a weapon. While working to place them in the cavern, a giant rat came in and bit a recruit, leaving a bloody mess in a hall. Once the vampires were stationed in the cavern, I noticed one heading back into the fort - for a snack obviously. He was able to get in because some constructions did not seal the cavern entrance. So I follow this dwarf to see who he'll claim. He gets to the bloody mess left by the recruit and turns around and goes back to his station. It was too long ago to remember if the blood tile became clean (definitely fed the vampire) or if the targeted victim woke up and the vampire experienced a feed job cancellation and decided to go back to his post (coincidentally went back once reaching the blood). While I think its the former and there was quite a mess from the giant rat attack, the other vampires sent to explore did manage to get back in to feed on other dwarves while I was busy micromanaging a mood, as I had forgotten to lock the hatch.

To the people complaining that their military vampires are leaving their burrow, it is worth noting that military dwarves in general will ignore burrow orders to get their task accomplished. In normal play, that means they'll go anywhere to pick up equipment, whereas vampires will abandon duties to feed. I think this is true even if burrow restrictions are set in the military screen for that squad.

I usually tag my vampires by noticing that they have a lengthy list of previous memberships. I don't know if that changed recently but I wanted to know: Based on what I read on the dev notes, evil creatures will leave a city once the population there becomes suspicious of their actions. So, will vampires leave your fort if they're jailed/beaten enough or does your population generally not care that there's a vampire loose and do not become suspicious of them?

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: What's going on in your fort?

« on: February 28, 2012, 09:19:30 am »

My Legendary Miner with Proficient Weaponsmithing became secretive and made an artifact diorite table. He didn't become a Legendary Mason in the process

DF Suggestions / Re: New Top Suggestion gathering, ROUND TWO

« on: September 02, 2008, 05:07:37 am »

Bring Back Guildmasters to fill requested "special abilities" (prospecting, zoom to dead, etc)
Improved Hauling (wagons, conveyor belts, pack mules, etc)
~~Underground Diversity~~
Improved Mechanics

I wonder if it would be better to vote for simpler things than these...

:Edit: Changed a vote, having not seen it on the dev page beforehand...

DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Post-Army arc squad management

« on: August 25, 2008, 11:31:13 pm »

I imagine you give your military types some sort of armor and a weapon eventually right?
If you have problems with deactivating squads, hit (w) on the military screen. It shows who has what weapons and armor, so you can pick out your military guys out of the civilians. It's also a great way to assign armor and shields to your new recruits.

Customizing their profession is something I'm going to start doing. I usually assign military duty to dwarfs that like a particular piece of equipment, but since I have my recruits wrestle until they're decently good at it, I end up forgetting what weapon they were to be given.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: What usually ruins your nicely planned layout for your fort?

« on: August 23, 2008, 01:33:02 am »

Oddly shaped aquifers. Had an ocean map where the ocean wasn't aquifer and the land had 3+ layers of aquifer marked on the embark screen. I started above the aquifer, then as I dug deeper, I kept having to edge closer to the ocean, so I ended up having skinny work areas.

Bad planning on my part. I need to expand a hallway, add rooms, or add another staircase, only to find I have a huge stockpile in the way. Or I'm about to make a moat, only to find a corridor has found itself in the layer under the moat's planned route.

While colored stone doesn't bother me usually, it does piss me off when I'm trying to find ore and all I run into are colored stone clusters. I'm about to abandon/'have fun' with a fort because I can't find any bituminous coal in the sedimentary layers, since all I run into is colored (read: different shades of gray) stone. Also because my tower cap farm took a whole year before I could wet the ground.

DF Gameplay Questions / Re: beginners course in simple engineering officially requested.

« on: August 19, 2008, 03:21:17 pm »

For indoor waterfalls, I don't subscribe to using an endless water supply and dumping it into a huge hole (unless its to and from an aquifer). Instead, I make a reservoir underneath the dining room/meeting hall, the same size of said room. I then make a pump stack drawing water from the reservoir to a distributing layer above the hall. The reservoir is primed, the pumps turned on, and water falls over a ledge, passing the room, and back into the reservoir.

▒▒☼▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
▒ %►≈≈≈~~…… ▒ distributing layer
▒≈◄% ▒room ‡▒
▒▒▒▒≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈▒ resevoir
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
‡ : Where waterfall and happy mist occurs
◄% : Screw Pump
☼ : Gear connecting to power supply

It works pretty well, but does take a while to set up. You'll only have to worry about the reservoir drying up eventually and dwarfs falling in (nothing a grate can't prevent)

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Ditch The Axes Strategy

« on: August 16, 2008, 11:46:54 pm »

I replaced my axe with a hammer for a military dwarf I was bringing to beat back skeletal carp, with the intention of forging the axe when I got there.

Then I forgot to bring wood or charcoal

Then my hammerdwarf tangled with some skeletal carp in the river and drowned

Luckily, the magma wasn't too hard to find.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Babies Surviving?

« on: August 16, 2008, 11:21:27 pm »

They're not completely ignored. Had the mom and pop die in a mess of a siege. I hadn't known they even had a baby until I got job cancellation spam about someone being unreachable, to give them food/water. Upon searching my halls, I found a baby in a dry, indoor moat, which was only accessible through a locked hatch. The baby had fallen down. The spam stopped as soon as the hatch was unlocked and I saw someone feed the baby.

I don't remember if the baby made it to childhood. I do remember a bronze colossus or some such nasty coming in and making a mess out of the rest of my tantruming, bridge destroying dwarfs. The only reason I hadn't lost was because the survivors were the wounded resting in their rooms.
I abandoned as soon as the baron came with the next wave of immigrant.

But this was before relationships were in, so I don't know if there's anything different with the way babies with no mom is handled.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Pillars - I miss caveins.

« on: August 16, 2008, 11:08:46 pm »

I'd like to see something more advanced than the 7x7 limit. I still adhere to it (mostly) but I'd like to think that a multi-z-level cavern (say digging out a pyramid shape) would allow a larger base.

Though, I just had a construction cave-in while starting a roof for an outdoor barracks, the dwarfs had started on a section off a bridge that I had built from another roof, rather than on the supports below. The piece and a dwarf fall through 4 floors! Had to place floors down to fix the hole and replace some stockpiles it went through.

So cave-ins are still in, but only when ~~you~~ your dwarfs build constructions carelessly.

DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Quarry?

« on: August 16, 2008, 01:14:20 am »

I have occasionally made actual 'quarries' when I wanted a specific stone. Had a bunch of obsidian waiting to be mined outside of my main planning area, so I set up a mason's shop there and dug out obsidian as needed.
I use small stone stockpiles to have certain colored stones moved somewhere near a mason's shop to make blocks. I otherwise set up mason shops and craft shops in the halls of my recent digging projects and have blocks, doors, and trinkets churned out until the halls and rooms are clear. Though, stone in stockpile rooms get dumped immediately. I had tried to make quantum stacks of various colored stones in previous versions during a large indoor waterfalls project. It was tedious...

I also make a stockpile for ore near my smelters, but I imagine everyone does that.

DF Bug Reports / Re: [39e] Moved Caged Goblin is burning in two different places

« on: July 30, 2008, 06:12:35 pm »

Ah, found it in the bug list. Number 000663. But it's marked as 'fixed'...

DF Bug Reports / [39e] Moved Caged Goblin is burning in two different places

« on: July 30, 2008, 03:53:14 pm »

Background: I wanted to see if green glass windows would melt when exposed to lava. I dug out a test area next to a channel of magma and remembered I had a caged goblin that needed punishment. So I made a hooked shaped area with some glass windows. If the glass windows held up to the magma, the goblin would have a bit longer to live than if the glass windows melted. And if the goblin is safe in the green glass cage, I had a lever hooked up. Yea, I wanted this goblin to die.

Turns out magma doesn't melt built glass windows, but it does go through glass cages (the cage did~~n't~~ melt ~~either~~ later). The goblin is now a smoldering mess and I go do some other things in the fort.

I'm moving between levels and notice there's a ton of smoke in my trade depot. I move over and find a bunch of the goblin's stuff laying where it was caught, but now all of its clothing was on fire!

So, bug is:
Caged Goblin's possessions do not move with it
These items are still attached to the goblin and, despite being in two different places, can burn if the goblin is on fire.

[edit] the cage did melt...